Typically, third-party application software communicates through a local area network to an embedded processor for managing an embedded device controlled by the embedded processor. This application software will communicate through the local area network, utilizing standard protocol such as: HTTP (hyper text transport protocol), SOAP (standard protocol enabling remote procedure calls) messages, and TLS/SSL (transport layer security/secure socket layer).
Further, some of the services provided by application software may execute on the same computational platform for which manageability of the embedded device is sought. For example, a management console may gather inventory information from all computational platforms in an organization. This inventory information may be gathered from the embedded manageability devices residing on an organization's computational platforms. As an additional example, the information may be located in some type of non-volatile memory. The application software may need to gather such information located within the control of the embedded device to provide, for example, information sharing between local and remote agents.
Simply returning information to the application software through a local device using normal network stacks will result in the information being forwarded incorrectly. Either the TCP/IP (transmission control protocol/internet protocol) stack may not forward the information to a network adapter or the network will not return data packets back on the same physical link from which they came.